There has been received by the State Department in Washington a translation of an essay which was awarded the first prize by the Chinese Government, the subject being the future policy of Chi The essay points out among other things that in foreign countries innumerable factories are established, where every conceivable article is manufactured by machinery, and in such vast quantity that after supplying the home demand' an enormous export trade jis carried on with tremendous profit, In China, everything being done by hand, she cannot, in spite of her enormous natural resources, begin to compete with the countries that employ machinery, and the essayist concludes that unless China shall establish factories with modern machinery and skilled foreign mechanics, so that in time she can learn to make her own machinery and operate it, she will always be at a disadvantage as compared with other nations. To this scheme of manufactures the prize essayist would add a policy ut protection and urges that China should revise her tariff at once in that direction, Export duties, he says, should be removed, least lightened a great deal, trade should be extended, the Chinese mercantile navy increased and foreign trade, now in alien hands, be taken under Chinese control. This programme speculative though it may be at the present time, caus not be disregarded. The internal resources of China are enormous, as the essayist says, and if the Chinese Government ever does reverse its historic and traditional policy and China become a great manufacturing nation, a commercial war will: ensue in which the rest of the world, with all its boasted civilisation, will have all it can dg to hold its own,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.